The Job After Steve Jobs: Tim Cook and Apple

From the moment he became CEO of Apple, Tim Cook found himself in the shadow of his boss

Author of "Haunted Empire, Apple After Steve Jobs", Yukari Kane discusses what she's learned about Tim Cook, Apple's evolving relationship with its suppliers, and whether or not she believes Apple has lost it's way since Steve Jobs' death.

By

Yukari Iwatani Kane

Feb. 28, 2014 8:40 p.m. ET

Shortly afterTim Cook succeeded Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple in August 2011, he told a confidant that he got up every morning reminding himself just to do the right thing—and not to think about what Steve would have done.

But Jobs's ghost loomed everywhere after he died from pancreatic cancer two months later. Obituaries of Apple's visionary founder blanketed the front pages of newspapers and websites. TV stations ran lengthy segments glorifying the changes he brought to the world.

In New York, publisher Simon & Schuster rushed out Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs a month early—with a sleek, Apple-esque cover featuring a photo blessed by the late CEO. Apple chose the same image as the tribute photo on its home page. The photo was so quintessentially Jobsian that his friends and colleagues marveled at how he still seemed to be orchestrating the narrative from beyond the grave.

Even the ritual remembrances unfolded as though Jobs had staged them himself. A memorial service on a Sunday evening at Stanford University was organized by his longtime event planner, and the guest list read like a Who's Who of notables in Jobs's life: Bill Gates,Larry Page,Rupert Murdoch and the Clinton family, among others. Joan Baez, Jobs's onetime girlfriend, sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." Bono performed Bob Dylan's "Every Grain of Sand." Yo-Yo Ma brought his cello and played Bach—a personal request from Jobs before his death. Jobs was gone but not gone. Somehow he had transcended death to obsess over the launch of one last product: his own legacy.

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Tim Cook, whom Jobs had personally picked as Apple's new CEO, was at the service, but attendees gave the former chief operating officer little thought. Even as he took control of Apple's empire, Cook couldn't escape his boss's shadow. How could anyone compete with a visionary so brilliant that not even death could make him go away?

The genius trap had long been set for Jobs's successor. Apple had been defined by him for more than a decade. Design, product development, marketing strategies and executive appointments—all hinged on his tastes. Apple's accomplishments weren't Jobs's alone, but he had taken credit for most of them, which further fed his legend. One employee even owned a car with the vanity plate "WWSJD": What Would Steve Jobs Do?

The next CEO didn't have the quasi-religious authority that Jobs had radiated. Cook's every decision would be examined by current and former employees and executives, investors, the media and Apple's consumers. He would also have to contend with the sky-high expectations that Jobs had conditioned the public to have for Apple.

Cook was a seasoned businessman and arguably a better manager than Jobs. He was organized, prepared and more realistic about the burdens of running a company of Apple's size. But no one could beat Jobs at being Jobs—especially Cook, his polar opposite.

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Tim Cook and Steve Jobs at an Apple news conference in 2007
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If Jobs was the star, Cook was the stage manager. If Jobs was idealistic, Cook was practical. But without Jobs, Cook had no counterweight to his dogged pragmatism. Who would provide the creative sparks?

The succession was complicated by the fact that no one knew who Cook really was. The new CEO was a mystery. Some colleagues called him a blank slate. As far as anyone could tell, Cook had no close friends, never socialized and rarely talked about his personal life.

The quiet, self-contained Cook grew up as the second of three brothers. In his early years, the family lived in Pensacola, Fla.; his father worked as a shipyard foreman, and his mother was a homemaker. They later moved to Robertsdale, Ala., a small, predominantly white town near the Gulf of Mexico that was quiet, stable and safe. In high school, he was voted "most studious." He represented his town at Boys State, an American Legion mock legislature program, and won an essay contest organized by the Alabama Rural Electric Association on the topic of "Rural Electric Cooperatives—Challengers of Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow." Outside of class, Cook was appointed the business manager of the yearbook because he was meticulous and good with numbers.

Cook began his career at IBM after graduating from Auburn University with a degree in industrial engineering. Later he added an M.B.A. from Duke. After 12 years, he moved to a small Colorado computer reseller called Intelligent Electronics Inc., where he nearly doubled the firm's revenues. He was plucked by Compaq and moved to Houston. One day a headhunter called: Apple was looking for a senior vice president of world-wide operations. "Why don't you come and meet Steve Jobs?" the recruiter asked.

Cook joined Apple's executive team in the spring of 1998, while the company was in the throes of restructuring and desperate for a capable executive who could make Apple's manufacturing process more efficient. Unlike his predecessors, who sat with the operations team, Cook asked for a small office cater-cornered to Jobs's on the executive floor. It was a shrewd strategy—staying close to the boss to be attuned to his thinking.

From the start of his Apple tenure, Cook set colossally high expectations. He wanted the best price, the best delivery, the best yield, the best everything. "I want you to act like we are a $20 billion company," he told the procurement team—even though Apple then had only about $6 billion in annual revenues and was barely eking out a profit. They were playing in a new league now.

To some, Cook was a machine; to others, he was riveting. He could strike terror in the hearts of his subordinates, but he could also motivate them to toil from dawn to midnight for just a word of praise.

Those who interacted only passingly with Cook saw him as a gentle Southerner with an aura reminiscent of Mister Rogers. But he wasn't approachable. Over the years, colleagues had tried to engage him in personal conversations, with little success. He worked out at a different gym than the one on Apple's campus and didn't fraternize outside of work.

Years earlier, when Apple was about to ship its movie-editing software, iMovie, Jobs wanted his executives to test it out by making home movies. Cook made his about house hunting and how little one got for one's money in the late 1990s in Palo Alto real estate. While amusing, the movie revealed nothing about him.

Apple under Jobs was a roller coaster, but Cook's operations fief was orderly and disciplined. Cook knew every detail in every step of the operations processes. Weekly operations meetings could last five to six hours as he ground through every single item. His subordinates soon learned to plan for meetings with him as if they were cramming for an exam. Even a small miss of a couple of hundred units was examined closely. "Your numbers," one planner recalled him saying flatly, "make me want to jump out that window over there."

Cook had made a particular point of tackling Apple's monstrous inventory, which he considered fundamentally evil. He called himself the "Attila the Hun of inventory."

Meetings with Cook could be terrifying. He exuded a Zenlike calm and didn't waste words. "Talk about your numbers. Put your spreadsheet up," he'd say as he nursed a Mountain Dew. (Some staffers wondered why he wasn't bouncing off the walls from the caffeine.) When Cook turned the spotlight on someone, he hammered them with questions until he was satisfied. "Why is that?" "What do you mean?" "I don't understand. Why are you not making it clear?" He was known to ask the same exact question 10 times in a row.

Cook also knew the power of silence. He could do more with a pause than Jobs ever could with an epithet. When someone was unable to answer a question, Cook would sit without a word while people stared at the table and shifted in their seats. The silence would be so intense and uncomfortable that everyone in the room wanted to back away. Unperturbed, Cook didn't move a finger as he focused his eyes on his squirming target. Sometimes he would take an energy bar from his pocket while he waited for an answer, and the hush would be broken only by the crackling of the wrapper.

Even in Apple's unrelenting culture, Cook's meetings stood out as harsh. On one occasion, a manager from another group who was sitting in was shocked to hear Cook tell an underling, "That number is wrong. Get out of here."

Cook's quarterly reviews were especially torturous because Cook would grind through the minutiae as he categorized what worked and what didn't, using yellow Post-its. His managers crossed their fingers in the hopes of emerging unscathed. "We're safe as long as we're not at the back of the pack," they would say to each other.

Cook demonstrated the same level of austerity and discipline in his life as he did in his work. He woke up at 4:30 or 5 a.m. and hit the gym several times a week. He ate protein bars throughout the day and had simple meals like chicken and rice for lunch.

His stamina was inhuman. He could fly to Asia, spend three days there, fly back, land at 7 a.m. at the airport and be in the office by 8:30, interrogating someone about some numbers.

Cook was also relentlessly frugal. For many years, he lived in a rental unit in a dingy ranch-style building with no air conditioning. He said it reminded him of his humble roots. When he finally purchased a house, it was a modest 2,400-square-foot home, built on a half-lot with a single parking spot. His first sports car was a used Porsche Boxster, an entry-level sports car that enthusiasts called the "poor man's Porsche."

Even his hobbies were hard-core: cycling and rock climbing. During vacations, he never ventured far. Among his favorite spots were Yosemite and Utah's Zion National Park.

Cook placed Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. among his heroes, and photos of both men hung in his office. In a statement that hinted at how Cook viewed his relationship with Jobs, he said that he admired the way RFK had been comfortable standing in his brother's shadow. The martyred senator embodied everything that Cook strove to be—hardworking, principled and charitable.

As tough as Cook was reputed to be, he was also generous. He gave away the frequent-flier miles that he racked up as Christmas gifts, and he volunteered at a soup kitchen during the Thanksgiving holidays. He had also participated in an annual two-day cycling event across Georgia to raise money for multiple sclerosis; Cook had been a supporter since being misdiagnosed with the disease years before. "The doctor said, 'Mr. Cook, you've either had a stroke, or you have MS,' " Cook told the Auburn alumni magazine. He didn't have either. His symptoms had been produced from "lugging a lot of incredibly heavy luggage around."

In August 2011, a few months before Jobs died, Cook sent his first email as CEO to employees. "I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to change," he wrote. "Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that—it is in our DNA." He added, "I am confident our best years lie ahead of us and that together we will continue to make Apple the magical place that it is." He signed the memo simply, "Tim."

After Jobs's death, Apple's employees rallied around Cook. But privately, many were anxious. Employees in departments that had heretofore had little to do with Cook worried about how their jobs might change. The operations team, familiar with his tough management style, worried about life becoming even more intense.

In his first days as CEO, Cook made two key moves. First, he promoted Eddy Cue, Apple's enormously popular vice president for Internet services. Cue had been Jobs's guy, managing the iTunes group and eventually all of Apple's Internet services. He was Jobs's deal maker as well, negotiating with music labels, movie studios, book publishers and media companies. When Cook finally made him senior vice president, it generated goodwill inside and outside the company—and turned an important Jobs loyalist into a key Cook ally.

Cook's second decision was to start a charity program, matching donations of up to $10,000, dollar for dollar annually. This too was widely embraced: The lack of an Apple corporate-matching program had long been a sore point for many employees. Jobs had considered matching programs particularly ineffective because the contributions would never amount to enough to make a difference. Some of his friends believed that Jobs would have taken up some causes once he had more time, but Jobs used to say that he was contributing to society more meaningfully by building a good company and creating jobs. Cook believed firmly in charity. "My objective—one day—is to totally help others," he said. "To me, that's real success, when you can say, 'I don't need it anymore. I'm going to do something else.' "

The moves signaled a shift to a more benevolent regime. Though still shuttered to the outside eye, Apple felt more open internally. The new CEO communicated with employees more frequently via emails and town-hall meetings. Unlike Jobs, who always ate lunch with the design guru Jonathan Ive, Cook went to the cafeteria and introduced himself to employees he didn't know, asking if he could join them. Without Jobs breathing down their necks, the atmosphere was more relaxed. Cook was a more traditional CEO who infused Apple with a healthier work environment.

Cook proved a methodical and efficient CEO. Unlike Jobs, who seemed to operate on gut, Cook demanded hard numbers on projected cost and profits. Whereas Jobs had reveled in divisiveness, Cook valued collegiality and teamwork. Cook was also more visible and transparent with investors.

Not everyone was so enamored. The changes Cook made were perceived as signs of increasing stodginess. The yearning for more subversive days was also palpable. Skeptics soon began expressing doubts about Apple's future, especially after the rocky launch of Siri, its virtual personal-assistant feature.

"Without the arrival of a new charismatic leader, it will move from being a great company to being a good company," George Colony, the CEO of technology research firm Forrester Research, wrote in a blog. "Like Sony, Polaroid, Apple circa 1985, and Disney, Apple will coast and then decelerate."

Above it all, the specter of Steve Jobs still hovered—somewhere beyond reproach and accountability, beyond the tangle of human fallibility. His successors remained stuck here on Earth.

Ms. Kane is a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal. This piece is adapted from her new book "Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs," which will be published on March 18 by HarperBusiness, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Even though he is a better manager and business man, Tim Cook lacks the wow-factor that Jobs brought to the company. The reveal for the first iPhone (Unveiling 3 products that all happen to be the same product) was arguably the most amazing presentation of the century. It literally changed the world. Cook needs to work on his storytelling and suspense skills.

Ms Kane does not know enough about Apple, the company and its history, to speak authoritatively about it. There are pundits and bloggers out there who have been Apple watchers for 20+ years and have much better insight about the company than Ms. Kane who only presents facts and recollections that bolster her predetermined narrative about Apple. A narrative that seems to have been chosen to generate controversy and thus spur book sales.

If you are really interested in understanding Apple, root around the internet a little and you will find those people who can give you a much more nuanced and insightful take on Apple. And they won't assert one thing and contradict themselves a few pages later.

I'm not worried. Steve gave us Mac OS, itspredecessors and a number of cute thoughless than earth shattering computers, except forMacintosh (Hello) for adherents - of whom I count myself one, to play it on. For many years, especially those before OSX there was frustration aplenty. Steve and his successors stuck with suppliers like Motorola too long as the performance of competing hardware surpassed his cherished Mac. OS9 worked bare bones but locked up in the presence of those nasty third party programs.

Overall, market share limped along in single digits, reflecting the morass - yet there was always the elegance of the experience - well, a lot of times.

The machines typically came in innovative packages - (e.g. Mac Duo) and the products brilliantly packedfor purchaser's opening. When Steve returned, there were colors. Admit it, we paid a price for the eleganceand the company survived on loyalty. Imagine amain product suffering from so many little annoying quirks it give rise to an Evangelist (one Kawasaki)to see it through the "thin."

Steve's 1996 return was followed six years later byOSX, which added to the impetus provided by his returnto Apple. This alone, supplanting OS 9 with the Nextversion of a Unix platform, bringing relative stability tothe Mac - no small accomplishment, in 2002 was eventually followed in 2007 with Steve's master strokes - iPhone, and then in 2010. iPad. Except for crises and recessionary forces the stock hit the high road on thesemoves and the products earned a reputation for stabilityand reliability. In between there were more hiccups, notably the MobileMe fiasco.

Here's my belabored point. Steve's homers from the Apple 1until the iPhone total six (Apple 1, Mac, OSX, iPhone, iPad,).This over a 32 year span from 1976 until 2011. That's a hit on the average of once in 5.3 years. Tim's been on the job since 2011 - 3 years. And before that he gets credit fora dearth of huge bloopers - having shepherded the introduction of revolutionary high volume, extraordinarilyhigh quality products and huge increases in sales and profits.

Note I've omitted iTunes, a blockbuster but a fortunateacquisition from Soundjam introduced in 2001 - and theApple Retail Stores which was arguably a move to correctan off-putting Mac with hand holding - built by Ron Johnson.But if you include the latter two and increase the homers toeight, that's still 4 years from run to run. Tim's still got time.

To those predicting the eclipse of a great tradition I'd saydon't worry about that lack of earthquake products - yet.You know there are big things in the lab. A TV, a watchor other wearables - all possibilities. And if Cook does gowith one or more of these they'll have Jony design. work as advertised ("the user experience") fill the supply chain,earn top Consumer Reports ratings, etc.

Now, while I'm long Apple, I'd love to hear countervailing thoughts. I'm clueless about those apps that sell Macs - andSteve's influence on their creation. Certainly critics aboundand MS Office hasn't given way to their sway in the market.iMovie, iPhoto, GarageBand, iWork, etc. Have at it.

If Cook keeps saying things like "don't buy our stock if you don't support AGW", I would start looking for a new CEO. Far-left political fanatics are rarely good for corporate health. That attitude drives customers away.

This was a great article and you can see similarities between Jobs and Cook; they can both be intimidating, they demand very high standards from their team, they both work incredibly hard, they both had common/ lower middle class upbringings, both showing extreme brightness in early childhood.

I think Tim has and continues to do incredible things at Apple, not just with keeping great products great, but also maximizing revenues through continued growth and expansion through global telecoms companies.

I am very confident that Tim Cook will deliver great products in the near future based on delivering to consumers 1st Class Post Jobs product extensions (iPad Mini, Air and innovation e.g. Fingerprint Scan).

Tim Cook is great and recognizing the brilliance of Steve Jobs and is committed to maintaining the Steve Jobs culture but perhaps giving teams a little more room to breathe!

One thing that does not get much ink nowadays is how disciplined many American businesses have become, which is a good thing if we are going to compete on the world stage. Look, for example, at PSI, which GM (or its handlers) threw out the window. It is a basic, old-school industry that has gone from fat and happy to lean and mean to skinny and nasty.

So perhaps some discipline is exactly what Apple needs right now. Inside of a Space Cowboy, maybe a grinder who can make things work is the best choice.

I hope the book is better than this excerpt. Tim Cook was reportedly an exemplary operations chief. In addition, he is someone who can see the whole picture. This is why he was promoted to CEO.

Cook's belief in equality doesn't just encompass charity. He has supported raising the salaries of Apple's lowest paid employees - store clerks. And, he is dedicated to building some Apple products in the U.S. to broaden its workforce here.

As for Cook's alleged preference for privacy, as an apparently gay man who weathered the hostility that has been the norm toward that demographic often, his attitude is understandable. It is better to be considered standoffish than to become a target.

Tim Cook has held the reigns at Apple after Job's death. Although his ability as an operations guru is impressive, he has failed to keep Apple at the top of the heap as far as product desire is concerned. The mystique and edge that Apple products had and led consumers to pay a premium for less capable functionality and utility appears to be gone.

While Apple products are still top notch, and will remain in demand, statements like 'Dear climate-change deniers, please don’t buy shares in APPLE'... will not necessarily endear every potential consumer to purchase a/more Apple products.

As a private company, one has the luxury to express private sentiments based upon one's own beliefs and knowingly accept the consequences, good or bad of those expressions. As a publicly traded company, this truly is a risky proposition, especially for a company whose stock value has lately retreated considerably and whose future product pipeline does not appear to be as robust nor sterling as it once was.

Apple hasn't had a significant new product since the iPad was designed in 2008-9.

Sure, Cook's a grinder. He'd be better employed by H-P, winding down their business as slowly as possible.

This was one of the poorer WSJ stories I've ever read, perhaps because I'm in the industry. But wake up: Apple grew on innovation, failed on execution (Scully). And innovation has fled (or died).

Now we have a guy who is pursuing political points, and beating the stuffing out of his staff for .003% better margins. All well and good, but CEO's do strategy, and COO's do enforcing. Tim Cook has provided no new strategy, no new strategic products, nor any management innovation. Who or what is Tim Cook? A grinder with a tin ear for new product innovation. Apple will be 50% of its current value in 24 months.

The entire world standardized on the iPhone 4 hardware port. Tim Cook created a new one. I use my iPhone4. Jobs never makes that mistake, nor anyone who doesn't have contempt for customers. That was the inflection point. Everything since then has been H-P rivet polishing.

Apple seems to be living off the momentum and innovations that Steve Jobs created, just like the first time Jobs left the company. And Tim Cook sounds like more of a John Sculley than a Steve Jobs.

This time Jobs left behind a Microsoft-size cash generating machine. But without innovation, Apple will become a Microsoft, living off momentum and not the place that the best people want to work.

Tim Cook may not realize how many people and how many different kinds of people are required to replace Steve Jobs. He needs to get somebody that knows how to pick people to hire every true innovator that they can get their hands on, and he needs to put someone over them that will recognize a great thing when he/she sees it, and who has the ability to shepherd new products through the company.

With Jobs gone, that company needed stability. To let the employees know that everything is going to be all right.

At some point, Apple will need vision and creativity, and it won't come from Type A Tim Cook. It will need a free-wheeling thinker who isn't afraid to take a chance or to say, "f___ you" once in a while to the accountants.

Jobs was willing to take risks and make big bets on unproven technology to create new markets. Cook isn't a risk taker. Cook is a staid, dull bean counter. He makes a great CFO, but nothing I've seen from him says that he is a leader.

Reading the Author's description of Tim Cook, he comes across as the right CEO for Apple at this time. No longer is Apple the underdog surviving solely upon the will of Mr Charisma. Apple is a different company now. It seems Apple now needs a CEO who is "methodical and efficient" and values "collegiality and teamwork." I hope the authors conclusions are mistaken assessment of ones own work, rather then my pessimistic presumption that she is just trying to create an angle in order to sell books. I shall pass.

Kane's much moderated view of Cook and Apple; cf. WHY IS APPLE BEING SO NOSTALGIC? YUKARI IWATANI KANE in The New Yorker. See Macalope: Don't look back in anger or happiness. Methinks Kane and her publisher had a little chat about book sales.

While it is true that Apple has had no revolutionary new product since the iPAD, can anyone think of any revolutionary new electronic product from anyone since then? I think in the next 15 years we will see incredible innovations with the automobile,and I would not be surprised if Apple did not become a major player in that industry.

"Apple seems to be living off the momentum and innovations that Steve Jobs created, just like the first time Jobs left the company."

See Gary Wang's comment above. When Cook took over, Apple was (still is) in great shape. He didn't have to shake things up when he took the helm like Jobs did when he came back to Apple. Perhaps that's why so many people think he's just coasting. I would say that to be fair, you have to give Cook as much time as CEO as Jobs had between new products.

Will Timmy be another Sculley, or a Ballmer? Clearly, he isn't much of a CEO, plodding along for two years, with zero REAL accomplishments of his own, to show for it. EVERYTHING that occurred over the past two years was Job's legacy barreling forward...nothing to do with Timid Timmy. Still NO larger iPhone, only minor incremental 'improvements', SIri, maps and retail stores issues, no iTV beyond the little box, China issues...... no, nothing captivating about Timmy.

I don't think anyone expected another Jobs, but Timmy looks more like a clock puncher, out of his depth as 'CEO'.

For people not aware, he is referring to an effort by climate change deniers at Apple's quarterly meeting to force Apple to declare that it will ignore the issue and focus only on profit making. Tim Cook stopped short of telling them to go to Hell, but did suggest they divest themselves of Apple stock.

The phrase "Pay a premium for less capable functionality..." is your tell. No one who understands Apple or knows its products would say that. The democratization of music players, then multimedia players, by Apple has been THE consumer technology story for years. For example, there is hardly anyone in the world who cannot afford an iPod of some sort. Apple also sells an inexpensive set top box for television with the best streaming available and free storage to iCloud. Within the premium computer market (the only one Apple participates in) its prices for computers is competitive with those of other manufacturers.

"f*** you" - the accountants work for apple and do what Tim says, the shareholders on the other hand demand an return on their investment and Tim Cook very boldly today said if your looking for a quick gain then I suggest you don't buy Apple stock.

"dull bean counter"- this is the man who ran under Jobs and continues to run one of the world's sophisticated contract/ manufacturing and distribution supply chains.

"unproven technology" - the technology/ components were always first-class and available to anyone but Steve Jobs brought it all together like a composer and presented better than anyone else ever did.

Automobiles, banking / wallet technology and health are where apple is going. Once you control the 75% of the economy that these markets represent, then it is time to start to short the stock. Apple is a total package - your phone and other wearable devices that integrate with your transit, your purchases, your home integration - all of those are huge markets for apple (and any tech firm). But the apple integration is the best, and we will see all of those in the next 10 years.

Yeah but lets see, the iMac, iphone, iPad, and iPod all came from Steve Jobs. What has come since? A few tweaks around the edges. No company achieves being run by one person - after its a stodgy big corporation like Xerox heading toward irrelevancy. I have nothing against Tim Cook personally but without the genius of Jobs Apple is a lost ship.

Jony Ivy is a genius and the best at what he does, and what he does has been very important to the success of the products.

I don't think Jony Ivy thought of the Ipod, Iphone, or Ipad. And he did not put a very human interface on UNIX and call it Next and then later IOS and in the process save the Mac and Apple.

I just wonder if Ivy can create brand new products that create brand new markets like Steve Jobs did. I hope so. And if not Jony, I hope they have one or several people that can do it.

Steve Jobs was like the high tech version of the Renaissance Man. He was great at innovation, selling ideas and products, picking great people, leading people and companies, finance, negotiations, and on and on. He was one of a kind, he was a national treasure, and it will take a lot of people to replace all the things he did.

And, let's be clear that each of those ideas was percolating or being built at a skunkworks as long as 10 years before they appeared as a product. (Arguably, the Newton is the iPad's father.) For all we know, innovations are percolating or being tried out by Apple even as we speak.

Mr. Jobs took all of the credit for successes and blamed others for failures. In any corporation, innovation is a team effort. Please don't buy into the notion the Jobs truly invented anything of importance. (All of the basic engineering of the items you mentioned originated at non-Apple corporations). He was a decent marketer and a flawed manager, plus a creep as a human being.

Bingo! Whether Tim Cook shares Steve Jobs' personality traits is irrelevant. What matters is running Apple successfully, which Cook has done so far. In fact, people with very different personalities (say, Jobs and Bill Gates) can sometimes both achieve success in the same field.

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